Heritage often shapes a person, and Tao Ruspoli has generations of family history to go on. From his birth in Thailand, to spending his formative years shuffling between Rome and Los Angeles, Tao credits his eclectic and international upbringing with instilling in him a unique openness to life. From an early age, Ruspoli has always carried a camera in hand; compelled to document life as it goes on around him. It is his lack of preconception that is the catalyst for his ability to create such captivating, gritty and modern images both still and moving.

The son of occasional actor and full time Italian aristocrat Prince Alessandro (Dado) Ruspoli, and the grandson of European actor William Berger, Tao has the spirit of film running through his veins. In 2000, he formed the Los Angeles Filmmakers Cooperative; a bohemian collective of filmmakers and musicians who work out of a converted school bus. Through LAFCO, Tao has produced several films himself, in addition to helping dozens of filmmakers to make their first films and discover the wonders of digital media. His feature narrative debut, Fix, was awarded the Heineken Red Star Award for "most innovative and progressive filmmaker" at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Fix went on to win Best Film at the 2008 Brooklyn Film Festival, Vail Film Festival and the 2008 Twin Rivers Media Festival, among other prizes at various international festivals. Currently, Tao is working on Being in The World, a philosophical inquiry into the nature of creativity and the mastery of skill, which won the 2010 Best Documentary at the Vail Film Festival.

In 2006, Cisco Systems armed Tao with a (still) camera and sent him around the world in twenty-four days, where he captured the quiet and chaos of some of the planet's most exotic locations. He continues to shoot everything under the sun, from a day spent with JET for their Shaka Rock album cover, to Hollywood celebrities, to Haiti just before the quake. In January of 2010 Tao's Haitian photographs were sold as part of a relief fund raising arts event and silent auction called Artists for Haiti sponsored by Artists for Peace and Justice.

Articles about Tao have appeared in W (April 2009, Celluloid Prince) and MovieMaker magazine (Spring 2008), which singled out Ruspoli as one of the 10 Young Filmmakers To Watch.

Tao is also an accomplished flamenco guitar player, and his first CD, FLAMENCO, was released on Mapleshade Records in 2005. He currently resides in Venice Beach and New York City.

TAO’S CLIENTS

Joe's Jeans / Malibu Magazine / Bullett Magazine / Summary Magazine / Funny or Die / Alexander Ebert / Cisco Systems / Capitol Records